be occupied by an intelligent, an enterprising, a thrifty race; and, in a few years, the whole trade between India and Europe must be drawn to that point.  The tedious and perilous passage round Africa would soon be abandoned.  The merchant would no longer expose his cargoes to the mountainous billows and capricious gales of the Antarctic seas.  The greater part of the voyage from Europe to Darien, and the whole voyage from Darien to the richest kingdoms of Asia, would be a rapid yet easy gliding before the trade winds over blue and sparkling waters.  The voyage back across the Pacific would, in the latitude of Japan, be almost equally speedy and pleasant.  Time, labour, money, would be saved.  The returns would come in more quickly.  Fewer hands would be required to navigate the ships.  The loss of a vessel would be a rare event.  The trade would increase fast.  In a short time it would double; and it would all pass through Darien.  Whoever possessed that door of the sea, that key of the universe,—­such were the bold figures which Paterson loved to employ,—­would give law to both hemispheres; and would, by peaceful arts, without shedding one drop of blood, establish an empire as splendid as that of Cyrus or Alexander.  Of the kingdoms of Europe, Scotland was, as yet, the poorest and the least considered.  If she would but occupy Darien, if she would but become one great free port, one great warehouse for the wealth which the soil of Darien might produce, and for the still greater wealth which would be poured into Darien from Canton and Siam, from Ceylon and the Moluccas, from the mouths of the Ganges and the Gulf of Cambay, she would at once take her place in the first rank among nations.  No rival would be able to contend with her either in the West Indian or in the East Indian trade.  The beggarly country, as it had been insolently called by the inhabitants of warmer and more fruitful regions, would be the great mart for the choicest luxuries, sugar, rum, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, the tea and porcelain of China, the muslin of Dacca, the shawls of Cashmere, the diamonds of Golconda, the pearls of Karrack, the delicious birds’ nests of Nicobar, cinnamon and pepper, ivory and sandal wood.  From Scotland would come all the finest jewels and brocade worn by duchesses at the balls of St. James’s and Versailles.  From Scotland would come all the saltpetre which would furnish the means of war to the fleets and armies of contending potentates.  And on all the vast riches which would be constantly passing through the little kingdom a toll would be paid which would remain behind.  There would be a prosperity such as might seem fabulous, a prosperity of which every Scotchman, from the peer to the cadie, would partake.  Soon, all along the now desolate shores of the Forth and Clyde, villas and pleasure grounds would be as thick as along the edges of the Dutch canals.  Edinburgh would vie with London and Paris; and the baillie of Glasgow or Dundee would have as stately and well furnished a mansion, and as fine a gallery of pictures, as any burgomaster of Amsterdam.